Daytona board gives 1st OK to new beachside condo hotel

The Planning Board voted 11-0 on a proposal to rezone a 4.5-acre site on State Road A1A at the eastern tip of Oakridge Boulevard to allow for a 29-story condo building and a 26-story hotel.

EILEEN ZAFFIRO-KEANSTAFF WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH — A plan to build two massive condo hotel towers on the oceanfront gained a key approval Thursday night. The Planning Board voted 11-0 on a proposal to rezone a 4.5-acre site on State Road A1A at the eastern tip of Oakridge Boulevard to allow for a 29-story condo building with 105 rooms and a 26-story hotel with 500 rooms. If city commissioners also OK the rezoning from tourist accommodation to planned commercial development when they vote in March, the project will stay on track to begin construction in August and shoot to open by the fall of 2015. "This is a transformative project that can help the area," Charles Lichtigman, CEO of Charles Wayne Properties, a commercial real estate company in Daytona Beach, told Planning Board members. Don Poor, director of the Ocean Center, also spoke in favor of the 1.22-milllion-square-foot complex that would be an independent four-star facility. "What's your dream for Daytona Beach?" Poor asked. "Is status quo our vision, or do we want something loftier than that?" Poor said for the Ocean Center to be successful, the beachside core tourist area needs 2,000 quality hotel rooms, but currently has only 1,000 — half of which can't always be relied upon for availability. The new $100 million development could bring that tally up to 1,500 rooms, Poor said. An official with the neighboring Daytona Beach Regency hotel spoke in favor of the project, as did others. But the owners of the Sea Dunes Apartments, a small two-story building that would be surrounded by the new complex, asked Planning Board members to force the project's developers to adjust plans to respect their property rights. Paulita Kundid, whose parents bought the Sea Dunes in 1960, said the two towers would block sea breezes around the building she co-owns with her brother, attorney Mike Kundid, and create excessive heating. "Consider carefully what you're doing and everyone's property rights," she said. "It's an amazing project, but it's so much on a small piece of property," said the Kundids' attorney, Jim Morris. The project is being headed up by a group of Russian hotel developers. The complex could create 15,100 square feet of meeting space, 14,000 square feet of retail space and 400 permanent jobs. The plan also shows the condo hotel towers with shops fronting A1A at street level, indoor and outdoor pools, a spa, a fitness room, a ballroom, a roof garden, meeting rooms, penthouses and a state-of-the-art automated parking structure with machinery that would move cars into spaces and hold more than 600 vehicles. The design would maintain beach access to the public in the same area where people can walk and bike to the oceanfront now.